A Syrian refugee who fled to the Netherlands has reportedly confessed to murdering his 18-year-old daughter and dumping her body in a canal before fleeing the country in an apparent admission note sent to a Dutch newspaper.
Father-of-nine Khaled al-Najjar, 52, wrote in an email sent to De Telegraaf that he had killed his 18-year-old daughter Ryan al-Najjar, urging the publication to report ‘I am the one who killed’.
The confession did not specify exactly why he had decided to murder his daughter, with al-Najjar writing only that he was ‘very angry with her’, adding: ‘The reason is between me and the judge. I will read that in court’.
But neighbours and friends suspect Ryan’s death came as the result of an honour killing, with one claiming they had previously sheltered her when she had fled the family home in fear of retribution from her father.
Requesting anonymity to prevent any backlash, they told De Telegraaf that Ryan had a Dutch boyfriend, wanted to stop wearing a headscarf and had been beaten by her father who disagreed with her adoption of a Western lifestyle.
Unlawful sex relations while married (so cheating) are expected to be punishable by death enacted by the authorities if you can pass the nearly impossible burden of proof of four male adult witnesses. This is a lot harder than it sounds, for example Pakistan hasn’t had one of these in its 50 years of implementing hudood. In this case the girl wasn’t even married, so the father was acting on his own pejorative, not Islam.
It’s “prerogative”, not “pejorative”.
How people speak about this like this is normal and ok is beyond me, but anyway, the influence is there, the belief that this is so immoral that is punishable by death it is there too. And the fact that nowadays this practice is so extended in this particular religion is another thing.
Of course the authorities of any country that is not a hell hole won’t do anything about it even if they had these “four male adult witnesses”, especially in any European countries, that might be a reason why the families do this on their own influenced by these barbaric beliefs.
Again, this is a cultural practice, not religious. There’s no “influence” here because this was already a thing and remains a thing regardless of religion.
Not exactly, no. It’s a thing in India and Nepal too, and conspicuously not a thing in Muslim Southeast Asia, for example. You’re looking at the Middle East and South Asia, Muslim or not.
It’s actually kind of crazy… this same person just claimed that it hasn’t been done in Pakistan in 50 years because they somehow think it’s impossible for four people to lie about witnessing something (or for people to just take it into their own hands and do it anyway because their religious laws are more important to them than any nation’s).
Took me 3 seconds on google to disprove it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honour_killing_in_Pakistan